Items filtered by date: Wednesday, 27 June 2018

Although it's been long known that flight attendants are at higher risk of breast cancer and melanoma, new research has found an increase risk in the following additional cancers:

non-melanoma (basal cell and squamous cell)

thyroid

cervical

uterine

gastrointestinal

Researchers from Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, led by research associate, Irina Mordukhovich, surveyed over 5000 flight attendants as part of the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study (FAHS) and found a four-fold risk in non-melanoma skin cancer, a two-fold risk in melanoma, and a 51% greater risk of breast cancer, among other malignancy risks.

Those flight attendants with three or more children had even a higher risk of breast cancer.

TIME Magazine reported the following:

“Flight attendants are considered a historically understudied occupational group, so there is a lot we don’t know about their health,” says Mordukhovich. “What we do know for sure is the exposures that both pilots and flight attendants have—the main one being high radiation levels because of cosmic radiation at altitude.” That exposure may not be concerning for people taking individual flights, but for people whose jobs involve flying, that risk may have a negative effect on their health, as the study results suggest.

A 2007 study found an increase risk of heart attacks, respiratory illness, poor sleep, depression and anxiety in cabin crew.

What’s surprising is the average flight attendant does not smoke and maintains a healthy weight, hence thought to live a healthier lifestyle, decreasing heart and cancer risk. So….

Why are flight attendants at increased risk?

Multiple factors can affect those who work high in the skies. These include:

exposure to chemicals such as jet fuel, flame retardants and other chemicals.

constant exposure to pathogens and communicable diseases (link to cancer not yet determined)

not being able to maintain regular hydration and diet

How can flight attendants protect themselves?

It’s difficult for those who staff airlines to alter their schedule, diet or uniform. But what’s recommended is the following:

wear sunscreen

wear long sleeves and skirts/pants

maintain good hydration and a regular diet

try to ask for regular shifts that allow one to sleep regular cycles

if at higher genetic risk for some cancers (BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations) see your medical provider about recommended screening.

The CDC recommends the following:

Try to reduce your time working on very long flights, flights at high latitudes, or flights which fly over the poles. These are flight conditions or locations that tend to increase the amount of cosmic radiation the crewmembers are exposed to. You can calculate your usual cosmic radiation exposures. The FAA’s CARI program website allows you to enter information to estimate your effective dose from galactic cosmic radiation (not solar particle events) for a flight.

If you are pregnant or planning a pregnancy, it is important to consider your work exposures, including cosmic radiation. If you are pregnant and aware of an ongoing solar particle event when you are scheduled to fly you may want to consider trip-trading or other rescheduling actions if possible.

For flight attendants, a NIOSH study found that exposure to 0.36 mSv or more of cosmic radiation in the first trimester may be linked to increased risk of miscarriage.

Also, although flying through a solar particle event doesn’t happen often, a NIOSH and NASA study found that a pregnant flight attendant who flies through a solar particle event can receive more radiation than is recommended during pregnancy by national and international agencies.

Regarding solar particle events:

NIOSH has estimated that pilots fly through about 6 solar particle events in an average 28-year career.

Avoiding exposure to solar particle events is difficult because they often happen with little warning. You can find out whether a solar particle event is currently active through these sources:

Are travelers at risk?

Experts have suggested that those who are frequent fliers are still at low risk of being exposed to “too much radiation”. Traveller.au.com writes: Overall, the amount “is really inconsequential,” said Dr. Edward Dauer, director of radiology at Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, adding that medical CT scans result in a much higher dose.

How can I check my radiation dose?

The American Nuclear Society provides a calculator, based on where one lives, how many x-rays, and how many hours one flies,here.

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Daliah Wachs is a guest contributor to GCN news. Doctor Wachs is an MD, FAAFP and a Board Certified Family Physician. The Dr. Daliah Show , is nationally syndicated M-F from 11:00 am - 2:00 pm and Saturday from Noon-1:00 pm (all central times) at GCN.

After more than 30 years as a Supreme Court Justice, Anthony Kennedy has announced his retirement. This news probably doesn’t come as a shock to many, as the man is 81 years old making him the seconds oldest Justice that served. Ginsberg is three years his senior but has vowed to stay on the Court through the Trump administration.

President Reagan appointed Kennedy to the bench in 1988 and for almost two decades Justice Kennedy voted largely conservative on a variety of social issues including (but not limited to) - abortion, affirmative action and gay rights and the Gore vs. Bush recount; however, in more recent years he has cast a key swing vote for liberal principles casting the deciding vote in 2015’s for same sex marriage and even wrote the majority opinion - much to the chagrin of Republicans who began to view him as a turncoat. That being said, Kennedy did side recently with the majority allowing President Trump’s travel ban to stand.

So, Kennedy has voted on both side of the fence but with his departure it’s pretty much a certainty that President Trump will nominate a strong conservative to the high court. Which will give conservative judges a majority for, probably - decades.

The question is the same: How will Apple distribute all the TV shows it will create over the next year or so. Will it be a supplement to Apple Music, say Apple Music and TV, or will it be a totally different service? Will Apple just offer the shows a la carte, on a series pass, or establish a new streaming service?

Indeed, does the world even need another video streaming service?

Loads of people have Netflix around the world, and it’s producing hundreds of original shows every year. That and its large library of existing content is enough to satisfy many people, but it’s often supplemented by, say, a basic cable or satellite package that provides broadcast channels, a small number of free cable channels, and maybe some other odds and ends. Or perhaps a similar general-purpose streaming service, such as Sling TV from Dish Network or DirecTV NOW!

At one time, Apple was rumored to be working on a streaming TV package, but evidently couldn’t reach a deal with the networks. The reasons are unknown, but some suggest it was mostly about Apple’s stringent demands, a common excuse. By creating its own content, the entertainment companies are bypassed, but it would take years to build a big library, and that would ultimately involve returning to the industry to license content.

But the streaming sector is saturated. There are probably too many services as it is. So I still expect it to be included as part of Apple Music. While some suggest Apple wouldn’t recover the estimated billion dollars it’s spending on its TV project, it plans for the long term, and it doesn’t matter if the existing Apple Music structure doesn’t deliver a huge profit. It’s just one more factor that ties people into Apple’s ecosystem. Apple didn’t make profits from iTunes at first either.

Now on last weekend’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, we presented a special featured encore episode in which we presented Major General (Ret) Earl D. Matthews: He spent three decades at the nexus of big budgets and cybersecurity, including stints as Director, Cybersecurity Operations and Chief Information Security Officer at HQ, U.S. Air Force, and VP for Enterprise Security Solutions at Hewlett-Packard. In his current role as Senior VP and Chief Strategy

Officer at Verodin, Inc., he champions the concept of security instrumentation, a process that continuously validatesthe effectiveness of each security element in place. During this episode, he covered the gamut of cybersecurity issues that included the privacy issues at Facebook, the DNC hack, along with managing your personal privacy at a time when tens of millions of Americans have had their credit reports hacked. Major General Matthews also revealed two episodes of ID theft that impacted his own family.

You also heard from tech columnist and former industry analyst Joe Wilcox, who writes for BetaNews. During this episode, Joe explained why he regards Apple’s Siri voice assistant as worse than Microsoft’s Skype, despite all the connection glitches with the latter. Will hiring former Google executives help Apple make Siri more responsive and accurate, without sacrificing your security? You also heard about Google I/O and Android P, and about all those fake news reports that the iPhone X was unsuccessful. For two quarters straight, however, Apple reported that the iPhone X was not only its best selling Apple smartphone for each week it was on sale, but the hottest selling smartphone on the planet. Gene shared his 20 years experience with the iMac, which began with the original Bondi Blue model that he beta tested for Apple as part of the former Customer Quality Feedback (CQF) program. You also heard about the Apple

Watch and whether it makes sense for Apple to switch Macs from Intel to ARM CPUs.

On this week’s episode of our other radio show, The Paracast: On an anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s UFO sighting, Gene and returning guest cohost J. Randall Murphy host cryptozoologist and Fortean Loren Coleman. Loren discusses the weird deaths of paranormal authors, Ufologists, Mothman-linked folks, Superman personalities, and celebrities. Do these clusters of deaths have any significance, or is it all about coincidence? Will those copycat hangings involving such notables as fashion designer Kate Spade and comic actor Robin Williams continue? What about the reality behind such creatures as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and Thunderbird? Loren is founder and director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

READY FOR THE iPHONE KEY FOB?

I don’t recall the first time I bought a car with a keyless-entry remote control, commonly known as a key fob. I did some quick research the other day and ran across an item about the 1983 AMC/Renault Alliance as providing support for a remote that allowed you to lock and unlock the doors. But I was never a fan of AMC’s cars.

I also ran across a mention of a 1987 Cadillac Allanté, an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at building a two-seater roadster for the luxury brand. It was yet another car in which I had no interest whatsoever.

Now I can’t exactly recall the first car I purchased with one of these electronic gizmos, which are, of course, coded for a specific vehicle. It may have been a Honda Accord, but it still started conventionally. A real key popped out of the fob and the ignition assembly was traditional.

My last two cars, the one totaled last year and the one I own now, have a push button on the center console to turn the ignition on or off. Not so long ago, such a feature was mostly available strictly on expensive cars, but gradually filtered down to the more affordable vehicles.

While those key fobs are supposedly reasonably secure, they aren’t perfect. One of my guests on the tech show some months back, an “ethical hacker,” said you could compromise a key fob for many makes and models with a $35 device. It required being near the fob when it was scanned. I suppose that means they could be hiding in the bushes near a busy shopping plaza.

So is there a way for Apple to help provide a more secure option for a digital key system?

Well, according to a published report in AppleInsider, a new standard for digital keys has been published by the Car Connectivity Consortium, of which Apple is a member. It would allow you to use an NFC-enabled smartphone which includes both high-end Android and any iOS device that has Apple Pay support, to unlock doors and motor vehicles, among other things.

In effect, it would recognize your iPhone and other gear as a substitute for a key fob. Supposedly it’ll offer a higher level of security than existing keyless-entry systems can achieve, and I would believe that for Apple’s gear. Then again, if you can duplicate the data from an existing key fob with a $35 device, I suppose most any secured solution ought to be better. More to the point, however, would be the method by which your mobile handset is activated. Would it require pairing it with your existing key fob, or will automakers and lock manufacturers provide specific support to enable such a feature?

As with any new system protocol, however, it will take a while for you to see it appear. Car makers usually develop new vehicles a year or two out, so it may not happen until 2020; that is, assuming you can’t adapt existing systems, and I suspect you can’t if it requires custom chips to provide added security.

As with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, CCC support may first appear on expensive vehicles and gradually filter down to the models that regular people can afford.

In other words, when the standard finally shows up in a wide variety of cars, I may be too old to care.